Subhaga Crystal Bacon

Transitory: A Catalog of Trans Murders in the First Seven and a Half Months of 2020 

            an Acrostic for Justice

Just driving a taxi in Oklahoma was deadly for Dustin Parker, 25.
Using the women’s bathroom, Alexa, homeless in Puerto Rico—
social media killed her. Yampi Mendez Arocho’s profile: Humility Prevails—
taken at 25. Monika Diamond, honoring LBGTQ mothers through the 
International Mother of the Year Pageant: 34, North Carolina.
Caught with a stolen wig, in Harlem, Lexi, with her big heart, loved 
everyone she met. Johanna Metzger, who taught herself to play

just about any instrument, stabbed in Maryland. Selena Angelique Vasquez
using vacation time to visit her friend Layla Peraez Sanchez in Puerto Rico, both
stabbed like Alexa, and Yampi, and then Penelope, in the Baymon Correctional Center, 
time done for unnamed crime. Nina Pop, in Missouri, 28, stabbed in her apartment. 
I love myself now . . .  looking at the pictures before I transitioned, Hella Jae O’Reagan, 
cutting hair at the barbershop where she worked; stabbed. 20 years old in Texas.
Evening, May 27, Tallahassee, cops said Stop moving, n—-r, ending Tony McDade.

June 9, Rem’mie Fells, pulled from the Schuykill, legless; she lived her truth so loud
u could hear her a mile away.  An 18 year old boy and 14 year old girl with an adult man
shot Riah Milton, home health worker, 25 in Ohio. Jayne Thompson, shot by police,
troubled in her transition in Colorado. Bail was refused for an 18 year old student
in Chicago, who went home with Selena Reyes-Hernandez, and learning she was trans
came back later mad as hell, and shot her nine times. Brayla Stone, 17, Arkansas,
evidence of hate crime absent, was left in a car by another teen charged with a prior death.

Just an hour ago, arrested while I’m writing, the man who killed Merci Mack, 22, Dallas, 
unless she release a video of them together, shot her multiple times. One of five found dead
since the start of July: Shaki Peters, 32, Amite, Louisiana; Bree Black, 27, July 3, shot
too. Summer Taylor, white, non-binary killed after a car drove into a crowd of protestors 
in Seattle, Washington, on July 4 at the Black Femme March, not yet ruled a homicide, be-
cause driving a car into a group of protestors, on Independence Day, is apparently 
excusable or—what? Manslaughter?—binary loophole that says: not woman, not murder.



link to video



Subhaga Crystal Bacon is the author of two volumes of poetry, Blue Hunger, 2020 from Methow Press, and Elegy with a Glass of Whisky, BOA Editions, 2004. A cis-gender, Queer identified woman, she lives, writes, and teaches on the east slope of the North Cascade Mountains in Twisp, WA. Her recent work appears in the Bombay Review, the River Heron Review, Humana Obscura, and Plum Recruit.